The Holiday Letter

Show of hands. How many of you send an annual Holiday Letter? You know the kind - it's almost as infamous as fruitcake - the letter that people send to their friends and relatives bragging about their new yacht, their kid's Fulbright Grant, their vacation in Tuscany, and their lunch with the Dalai Lama.

I am one of those people. My family and friends have come to expect (dread) it, and they would wonder what horrible thing happened to me if they didn't get The Letter. Every year around this time, my compulsion kicks in, I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy writing and rewriting it, and it comes out just like last year's Holiday Letter: carefully worded to be informative enough to give the impression that everything is fine, yet not too informative. Most of the recipients don't want to know too many details.

It's part creative writing assignment, part essay exam, and part editing test. The purpose is to keep in touch with more people than you have time to write to personally, and therefore runs the risk of coming across as impersonal, which it is. It's supposed to bring folks up to date on your family news, and therefore runs the risk of disclosing more than Aunt Myrtle really wanted to know about your colonoscopy.

Like golf, it's guaranteed to be either too long or too short or otherwise off the mark, and someone is sure to take something the wrong way. Some people avoid saying the wrong thing by making their letter a photo essay and saying very little. Others play it safe by saying the same thing every year, updating the kids' ages and the specifics of their vacation. If you're smart, you realize that brevity is the soul of wit, and you don't include every 'A' on every report card, every athletic trophy, and every science fair blue ribbon.

Then there's the dilemma of to whom to send this tome. I have reduced my mailing list over the years to those who bother to send a card or write back. For reasons I will never know, people drop off the Flat Earth of correspondence, move and leave no forwarding address, by omission or commission decide to break it off. So Brett in Prudenville is gone. Brucie in Chicago is gone. Karen in Indianapolis is gone. Most, but not all, old girlfriends are gone. Most, but not all, old pals and roommates are gone. For most of them I must take responsibility for not holding up my end. This year, while addressing envelopes, I decided to do a little demographic study and track where they're going. The geographic breakdown is:

1. 18 Ohio
2. 5 Michigan
3. 5 Illinois-Wisconsin-Minnesota-Iowa
4. 6 Georgia-Florida-Tennessee-North Carolina
5. 4 Missouri-Kansas-Texas
6. 5 Washington-Oregon-California
7. 2 New York

What conclusions can be drawn from this statistical blip? Not much. My network is very limited, midwestern, provincial, domestic, parochial. I can live with that. I'm looking forward to getting a few choice words back from that relatively small circle.